About Syncura

We have been in the rooms

where automation fails.

Our founding team has built, deployed, and operated some of the largest automation solutions in the world. We know where these projects succeed. We know where they fail. We built Syncura to fix the failure points.

Our story

Why we built Syncura

Syncura was founded in early 2025 by a group of colleagues with almost 100 years of combined experience solving customer problems with enterprise software. We came together to focus on improving business productivity through AI-driven automation.

We have built and operated automation initiatives for some of the world’s largest organizations. Our experience spans multiple industries and geographies. We understand how businesses operate, and we know the incumbent technologies from the inside, including where and why they fall short.

The opportunity was clear. Traditional automation handles predictable cases well, but real business processes are defined by a long tail of variability.

Documents arrive in many formats and variations. Processes encounter exceptions. Data is often missing or inconsistent. Critical SaaS systems change their interfaces or workflows. This is where automation initiatives fail. They stall, require ongoing manual support, or are abandoned.

Inspired by how humans adapt to new situations, we set out to take a different approach. We combine advanced AI with new strategies and technologies to build automation that behaves more like a cognitive system.

Syncura is designed to handle process variability in a cost-effective and governable way at scale. This is not an added feature but a core design principle. Our platform is engineered for the complexity that conventional approaches cannot handle.

We understand what it takes to make automation work at scale. That experience, combined with a focus on solving real problems, shapes every customer engagement.

The founding team

Decades of experience learning the hard lessons

A team with deep operational, technical, and business experience. We have seen firsthand where automation initiatives succeed and where they fail. We work tirelessly to solve customer problems.

Douglas Heintzman

CEO · Co-Founder

Douglas spent 25 years at IBM, primarily as a global strategy executive. He has held roles including COO, VP of Strategy, advisor, board member, and management consultant. He also served as Chief Catalyst at the Blockchain Research Institute and as a policy advisor to the EU and North American governments. He is the holder of five patents. At Syncura, Douglas is CEO and co-founder.

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Hugh Frost

Chief Product Officer · Co-Founder

A recognised pioneer in intelligent automation with 25+ years delivering large-scale transformation programs across financial services, insurance, and telecoms. Founded and led RPA and AI practices at The Burnie Group and Client Lens Group, and led Insurance nationally at IBM Consulting. At Syncura, Hugh leads product — building from the buyer’s perspective, not the technologist’s.

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Jon “Jet” Theuerkauf

Chief Experience Officer · Co-Founder

30+ years delivering operational excellence and intelligent automation at GE Capital, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Sberbank, BNY Mellon, Blue Prism, and Nintex. Led Six Sigma deployments across 59 countries, delivered $500M in certified benefits at Credit Suisse, and held Chief Customer Officer roles at two leading automation software companies. At Syncura, Jet leads client and partner experience.

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Daren Hanson

Chief Revenue Officer

22 years at IBM across sales, engineering, business development, and marketing, leading both worldwide and geography specific teams. Since IBM, Daren has held CRO and VP Sales roles spanning early-stage startups to established growth businesses. At Syncura, Daren leads sales and marketing.

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Sam Ward

Chief Technical Officer

Over a decade in data science and AI, most recently as Head of Research and Development at Enate, a leading intelligent automation platform, where he led a team building AI-powered orchestration products at scale. At Syncura, Sam leads technical architecture and is accountable for ensuring what Syncura promises gets delivered.

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Priya Nama Venkatesh

SR. Ai Software Engineer

Senior ML engineer specialising in LLMs, vision-language models, computer vision, and agentic AI. Holds a Master’s in Machine Learning from Mila, the Quebec AI Institute, and graduated in the top 5% of her undergraduate class. At Syncura, Priya leads ML infrastructure and the production pipeline across the product line.

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Ru Zhong

SR. AI Software Engineer

Ru is responsible for the end-to-end development of core product systems. She leads technical design and implementation across the full stack, taking features from concept to production-ready systems built for scale.

Advisors

Guided by experience

Our advisors bring deep domain expertise in enterprise technology, financial services, and operational leadership. Their involvement reflects confidence in Syncura’s approach and mission.

Sal Vella

Advisor

More than 25 years at IBM as a VP and CTO across cloud platform engineering, database systems, and enterprise software, including leading a transformation that reduced outages 10x and introduced Site Reliability Engineering at scale. Subsequently VP of Technology and Operations Strategy and Innovation at RBC, one of Canada’s largest financial institutions, bringing rare dual perspective from both the vendor and client sides of enterprise technology.

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Darshan Jain

Advisor

35+ years in intelligent automation across banking, insurance, asset management, and beyond. Led Financial Services practices at SS&C Blue Prism and Nintex, achieving 25% year-over-year revenue growth, and as Managing Partner for Canada at Reveal Group led a workforce transformation across 3,600 FTEs at a top-10 North American bank. Also Adjunct Professor of Intelligent Automation at the University of Toronto.

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Charlie Feng

Advisor

Multiple-time founder with deep roots in fintech, data, and AI. Co-founded Clearco, which deployed over $3 billion to 5,000+ companies backed by Softbank and Founder’s Fund, and Agora, an onchain governance platform powering treasuries exceeding $10 billion. Most recently founded Runner, an AI workspace that connects to every app a team uses and does the work rather than just assisting with it.

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Talk to the team

about your automation challenge.

Have a direct conversation with us about where your automation initiative stands and where Syncura can help.

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